


Practical

by swooning



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 19:48:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swooning/pseuds/swooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written post-HBP. When Dumbledore's plans seem to have gone awry, Hermione goes looking for the one person she's sure can help the Order defeat Voldemort.</p>
<p>(Originally posted at Ashwinder).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
"No."  
  
She spoke softly, as if that would help. But too firmly to be mistaken.  
  
"Hermione… please. I know this is all too much, just now, but after we leave school… please. I love you." The lost-puppy look on Ron's long face was almost too painful; Hermione made herself look, made herself place her hands on his cheeks, press her forehead to his.   
  
"Oh, Ron, I know. I know you do. And a part of me loves you, too. Just…"  
  
"Just not that way," he said, with more sorrow than bitterness. She would have preferred more bitterness; it might have made things easier. "Hermione, is it because I tried – last night – what I wanted you to – "  
  
"No," she exclaimed vehemently, pulling away. "No, Ron, it's the other way around. Please don't think that of me. I would never play that sort of game, not with you. And I know you're not asking me to marry you just to try to trick me into agreeing tonight, or anything like that.  _I_ would never think that of  _you_. It's so sweet of you, and I'm so flattered. And I was flattered last night, too, Ron. Really. It's just that I couldn't – do  _that_  – when I knew how you felt. Not when…" she took a deep breath, searching for the right words. "Not when I knew it would mean one thing to you, and a very different thing to me."  
  
They hadn't been quite the right words, after all; she knew she was bad at this sort of thing. Ron pulled away, looking stricken, gently pushing her hands off his face and using his own shirtsleeve to wipe the tears he made little effort to restrain.   
  
"It would still have been a very special thing," she added lamely, immediately wishing she hadn't. The bitterness she had expected earlier finally began to surface.   
  
"I'm sure it would have," he snapped. "Paris, how romantic is that for your first time? You could've scored a month's worth of diary entries off that, or however it is girls keep track of that stuff."  
  
"Ron, don't –"  
  
"Why not?" He was almost yelling now, a fine flush coloring his cheeks.  
  
"Well… if for no other reason, we do still have a party to get back to." She gestured through the open doors, turning away from the stunning view of Paris by night to admire, instead, the elegant figures sweeping across the floor of the ballroom they had so recently vacated. "If we stay out here too long, people will get the wrong idea. Ron? Oh, please don't – Ron, I'm sorry!"   
  
Wrong words again, evidently; Ron had bolted away, back into the room, and lost himself immediately among the crowds lining the dance floor. Hoping he wouldn't do anything rash and foolish, Hermione followed him inside, but was unable to spot him. She paused at the edge of the floor, scanning the room slowly. Too many bright red heads in the crowd, as the Weasley family was so fully represented at this particular gathering. One such red head bent over a silvery-blonde one, as if drawn there by magnetic attraction; Bill Weasley and his new bride gliding by, moving as one, in a heart-stopping vignette of bliss. The groom, who wore his new scars with a swashbuckling ease that turned them into objects of interest, and further sex appeal ( _As if he needed any more,_ thought Hermione), and the bride, a snowy vision of perfection, the ideal beauty to his scarcely-tamed beast. Even the most jaded eye in the room – probably Mad-Eye Moody's good eye – was hopelessly drawn to look again, and again, wondering at the fairy-tale light that seemed to gleam around the new couple. Hermione, who was not jaded, but merely practical, suspected that Fleur had cast some sort of glamour; but she could hardly begrudge the girl such a trifle on her wedding day.  
  
And then, without warning, the night fell in, and the screams of the guests were the only points of navigation in the Stygian fog that swallowed them all.   
  


 

* * *

  
  
  
"Professor, can you hear me?"   
  
A slight flicker behind the delicately wrinkled eyelid; a good sign.   
  
"Headmistress?"  
  
"Miss Granger?" The voice, usually so crisp and precise, sounded faded, hesitant. Tired, very, very tired.   
  
"Yes, Headmistress. You asked me to let you know when the Ministry sent out the letters. We all got them today."  
  
"And?" Minerva McGonagall demanded, with only a shadow of the force she might once have employed.   
  
"They say 'postponed,' but Mr. Weasley and Mr. Shacklebolt have already heard the word from the Minister. A 'closed indefinitely' order is already being drafted. It should be sent out in a fortnight or so, once everyone's had the chance to make other plans."  
  
"Scrimgeour… never would have credited… with such political guile," the erstwhile Headmistress croaked out, finishing with a coughing fit that left her weaker than ever. "Right bastard," she managed to add, mustering a flash of her old spirit.   
  
"Mr. and Mrs. Weasley have already arranged private schooling for Harry and me at the Burrow. I think Luna Lovegood from Ravenclaw may also be allowed to come, and probably Neville, too. We're trying to get as many others as possible, but…"  
  
McGonagall was shaking her head, scowling, or trying to. "Eggs in one basket," she scolded.   
  
"Well… we won't actually be in  _that_  basket, of course. Headmistress?" For the once-fierce eyes had begun to drift shut again.   
  
"Don't call me that anymore, please," McGonagall said, with startling clarity. And then, she seemed to fall steadfastly asleep. At least, Hermione was unable to elicit any further response from her former Headmistress that day. The Healers at St. Mungo's, however, assured her that the Professor's recovery was coming along much more rapidly than they had expected, given her age and the length of time she had evidently spent under the Cruciatus curse.   


 

* * *

  
  
'Awkward' hardly began to cover the situation in which Hermione and Ron found themselves. Already thrown together by circumstance, with everyone accustomed to seeing the two of them in the company of Harry, they were now increasingly forced to be a duo by Harry's increasing inaccessibility, and the growing friendship between Ginny and Luna. Rarely had Neville Longbottom's arrival at any place been so eagerly awaited as it was at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, that early autumn, by Ron and Hermione.  
  
"Where's he off to this time, then?" Ron asked idly, realizing that, as was becoming all too common, Harry had disappeared from the study yet again.   
  
"I think he goes to the attic. Sometimes he asks Dobby to bring him things up there. Photographs, books." Hermione flipped through the book in which she was herself engrossed, and made a brief note on the almost-full page in front of her. Tapping her quill tip thoughtfully against the inkwell, she asked, almost absently, "Where is Ginny?"   
  
"In the kitchen, with Mum and Luna, having a lesson."  
  
"A lesson? Really?" Hermione looked up, her full attention on Ron for the first time in days. "A lesson in what?"  
  
"Dunno," he said with a shrug. "Some sort of useful kitchen stuff. About soup, I think." He paused, before adding, with cruel nonchalance, "She most likely didn't think you'd be interested."  
  
Hermione raised an eyebrow and lowered her quill. "In food?" she asked, a bit too coolly for true cordiality.  
  
"In getting involved with anything domestic," Ron retorted snidely, not meeting her eye.   


 

* * *

  
  
"He didn't," said Molly Weasley, flicking her wand at yet another pot of bubbling sumptuousness on the already-laden stove.   
  
"He did," Hermione verified, copying the wandwork with unerring accuracy.   
  
"Well…"  
  
"Mum, is this right?" Ginny's pot was beginning to smoke a bit, and her mother grew distracted as they tried to sort out where the girl had gone awry. Crisis averted, Molly tried again to think of some excuse for her son's behavior, but was still unable to conjure one.   
  
"Well, dear, I'm sure he'll start to get over the whole thing in time. And rightly so. You were all wrong for him, if I do say so. I always sort of imagined you for Harry, if the truth were known. Oh, Luna, how lovely!"   
  
Luna Lovegood's pot was simmering obediently, and she had begun to amuse herself by twisting the slowly rising vapor into various forms, her deft wandwork coaxing her little steam-creatures into nimble capers about the stovetop.  
  
"Harry's for Ginny," Luna mused, as two of the vapor-things seized one another in a wispy dance. "The runes say so."  
  
Hermione bit her tongue; in this instance, although for different reasons, she privately agreed with Luna. However, she wasn't certain that Molly felt the same way.   
  
"Harry's not for anyone right now," said Ginny, the lid on her pot beginning to wobble as the pressure rose dangerously high again. "The way he's going, in fact, he's  _never_  going to be for anyone."  
  
Her mother cast a knowing eye on her before speaking. "He does have quite a bit on his mind, Ginevra. Things other than the sort of thing that… well. Quite a bit."  
  
"Yes, Mum," Ginny retorted, impatience trumping wisdom. "We're all aware of the situation with He Who Must Not Be Named. And the Horcruxes, and the impending doom, and all of it, all right? Although I'm sure the Order has still managed to clutch a few remaining secrets to its collective bosom. Making sure the children are protected. Such a wise policy, that one." Ginny was actually raising her voice to her mother, now, and gesturing impetuously with both hands, including the one holding her wand. "Such a very wise policy, and you see how it's helping Harry so much. Let's hope it all works out better for him than it did for Professor Dumbledore!" And throwing down the wooden spoon she had been clutching in her other hand, she dashed out of the room, leaving the trio behind her in stunned silence.   


 

* * *

  
  
  
"Just tell us," she urged gently. "I know it's hard, but who knows? Maybe it will help. So far, each time we've made progress, it's been because we've all been working together. We can't stop now, Ginny, not when we're this close."  
  
The younger girl looked up in resignation. "I hate thinking about that time, still," she said plaintively.  
  
"I know." Hermione took her friend's hand, wordlessly offering her support, encouraging her to continue.   
  
"It all made sense at the time, what little I can remember. The bad parts were the parts I don't remember at all. But there was always this sense that…" Ginny swallowed hard. "That something horrible had happened. And something horrible always  _had_  happened. Which is why I just don't believe that's what's going on with Harry this time."  
  
"Well, what, then?" Ron insisted. "What would be making him pull away? He's worse than… than Sirius used to be. And I don't think he's actually working on anything new up there, he's just –"  
  
"Just thinking."  
  
All four started, and turned to see Remus Lupin in the doorway to the girls' room.  
  
"Professor."  
  
"Hermione."  
  
"We're just so worried about Harry, Professor. He seems to have given up, and we're so close, now. If we could just locate the last Horcrux. But he doesn't even seem interested. And Ron and I thought that – "  
  
"They thought it might be him, again," interjected Ginny. "He Who Must not Be Named, interfering with Harry, again. But it doesn't seem like that, to me."  
  
"To me, either," Lupin replied, a rueful smile curving his mouth. "Or not in the way you mean, anyway. I do have a theory, if you would like to hear it?" When all of them nodded, he went on. "You should know that – despite what you seem to think, Miss Weasley – we in the Order do care about what happens to Harry. You're not the only ones who've noticed him becoming withdrawn. But we do have one collective asset none of you fully appreciates, I think.  _Experience,_ " he asserted, chuckling at their uniformly skeptical faces. "Ginny, Ron, your parents have raised children representing a wide range of personality types and temperaments. And any few that they've missed, some other member is bound to have accounted for. And Minerva McGonagall, now she's back with us, she has taught hundreds of children; I've even taught a few myself, if it comes to that. And do you know what our gathered wisdom tells us about Harry?   
  
"It tells us that he is a seventeen-year-old boy, raised in conditions of horrendous emotional neglect, who has recently lost the two men he seemed to see as different aspects of the father he never had. Each of them lost in the course of terrifying battles, the memories of which might, alone, be cause for severe distress. Harry has made his final visit to his childhood home – and an unpleasant visit it was, I understand – and can never return there, even if he should want to. That's brutally hard for him to accept, even if he hated it there, although I don't expect any of you to understand why it would be so. And now his school, which he saw as his first real home, is closing. The Minister of Magic himself continues to badger Harry to provide a show of support for a program of action Harry cannot condone. Meanwhile, Harry is still expecting himself to solve the problems the entire wizarding world cannot, and somehow defeat Voldemort single-handedly." As they would have protested the last item, Lupin raised his finger in warning. "Now, think, all of you. We all know, here, that it will require all of us, working together, to accomplish this. But does any of you doubt that Harry has cause to think he will play the pivotal role?"   
  
None of them needed to answer; everyone connected to the Order, indeed, nearly everyone who knew the name Harry Potter, expected him to be instrumental in effecting the defeat of Lord Voldemort. For what else had he been groomed, all these years? For what else, many might ask, had he been born?   
  
Only later that night, unable to sleep, did Hermione's lively brain begin to dig closer to another truth, another line of possibility, one that drew her out of bed, down to the study where her books awaited, to investigate the different ways in which Muggle and wizarding dictionaries defined the word "soul."  


 

* * *

  
  
  
"Hermione, that's just madness."   
  
To hear those words from Luna Lovegood's mouth was, admittedly, something of a blow. But Hermione, dogged in pursuit of her theory, persisted.   
  
"But it all fits. Listen, just listen. Harry's scar always hurt when Voldemort experienced emotions. Strong emotions. And even the dream, vision, whatever, with Mr. Weasley, and the ones of the Department of Mysteries, all of those were tied to emotions and strong desires. Tom Riddle was very clever in school, but for all that, I believe Dumbledore saw that he lacked something, even as a child. Some connection with other people, with how they felt. Or else he knew how they felt, and just didn't care."  
  
"I still don't see how this could mean… what you're saying. Nothing fits, it's just loony, Hermione. Sorry, Luna," Ron added hastily, although Luna had not seemed to notice his use of the epithet.   
  
" _Listen_ ," Hermione repeated. "I'm not finished, and this is complicated. Now, regardless of whether you consult Muggle or wizarding sources, there seem to be two major ways in which to define the concept of a soul. There are a lot of sub-definitions, but they all sort of group together under these two broad schools of thought. Under the first, a soul would be some sort of nebulous, animating force. A life spirit, if you will. That which makes us whole, in a spiritual sense."  
  
"Hermione, we already know all this," Ginny interrupted.   
  
"But second,  _second_ , it can be viewed as our moral or emotional force. Emotional, in particular, is what I'm driving at here, because I don't think Tom Riddle would have concerned himself with moral force as such. Now, we know that Riddle was clever. But if he had to choose between these two, if he was trying to form a concept of his own soul, in order to divide it, I don't believe he would have chosen the first."  
  
"But… if he lacked the ability to connect… isn't that emotional? What he lacked?" Neville was grasping, but Hermione seized on even this tenuous thread of support.   
  
"Yes, for other people. But his  _own_  emotions, Neville, just think. His emotions, his greed, his ambition, and hatred, fear, envy, those emotions ruled his life. And compared to an 'animating force,' it's much easier to think of emotions as quantifiable. He was fond of quantifying things, brilliant at Arithmancy and Potions, he would have sought out ways to enumerate his soul before he went about dividing it so neatly into equal portions."  
  
"That's beautiful," commented Luna. "Like poetry."   
  
Hermione did her best to ignore this, and went on. "And what does Harry feel through his scar, in what way is he connected to He Who Must Not be Named? Through  _emotions_ , always. Which would be even stronger, now that Voldemort is so much stronger, even harder to push out, even if Harry thought he could push them out. It would always be there, in the background." She let this sink in a moment, before pressing still further. "Don't you all see? Harry isn't just reading his emotions at random. He is in constant touch with part of Voldemort's soul."   
  
It was Ginny, finally, who spoke. Reluctantly, but honestly. "I have to admit, it  _does_  make sense when you think of it that way."  
  
"But, if that's true, if she's right, and Harry's…"  
  
"A Horcrux. You might as well just say it, Ron," insisted Hermione.   
  
"Then why has Voldemort tried to kill him? He wouldn't want to destroy a piece of his own soul, would he?"  
  
Hermione was not to be so easily undone; she had spent a long night, indeed, and she was a girl who knew how to do her homework. "He doesn't know. We already know he doesn't seem to maintain any instant connection with the Horcruxes; their destruction or movement isn't immediately known to him, it doesn't hurt the part he keeps to himself now. He's separated himself from those bits entirely, and he has to find out about them second-hand. So maybe, just maybe, he really doesn't know if he's created a Horcrux out of a particular object or not; just that he's created one, and that he had a certain object in mind, and assumes it has become the Horcrux. My theory is that he went to Harry's parent's house that night, intending to use Harry's death to create a Horcrux using some other artifact, something related to Gryffindor."  
  
"Gryffindor parents, not a pureblood, Godric's Hollow," mused Luna.   
  
"Exactly," Hermione agreed.   
  
"Godric's Hollow, home to Bowman Wright, inventor of the Golden Snitch. Did you know that the same spell he crafted to keep the Snitches within a Quidditch pitch can be used to restrain a nundu, if the nundu is placed within the designated area as a cub and raised there? The Eastern Wizarding Council don't want people learning about it, or they'll lose the power they gain by the almost universal fear of the nundu, but it's true. All that about needing a hundred wizards to overpower one is just –"  
  
"Luna!" Hermione, like the other three, stared at Luna, who smiled back contentedly, and fell silent. "My point is, that if Harry really is the Horcrux, then somewhere there's an artifact Voldemort  _thinks_  is a Horcrux, but isn't."  
  
She looked expectantly at the other four. Neville spoke first, hesitantly.   
  
"But… that's brilliant, Hermione, but it's just that I don't see how it matters. I mean," he went on, braving her incredulous glare, "if it isn't actually a Horcrux, and Harry  _is_  the Horcrux, then why would it matter what it is? Or where it is?"   
  
To Hermione's surprise, Ron spoke up. "Because he'll be protecting it."  
  
"What?" Neville looked, if possible, even more puzzled.   
  
"He'll be protecting it," Ron repeated it, "and when you protect something in one place, you have to devote resources to that, so you often expose a weakness in some other place. Especially as you get closer to the end game. Right, Hermione?"  
  
She was beaming at him; he hadn't seen her smile so broadly in months, perhaps longer.   
  
"That's it, Ron. That's it exactly. So now what we need to find out is—"  
  
"--who has the false Horcrux."  
  
"And I think I know just the person he would entrust it to."  


 

* * *

  
  
Without the resources normally available to her at Hogwarts, and without Dumbledore – who, of them all, probably knew Snape best – Hermione was rather at a loss for where to begin her new line of research. Help came only sporadically, and usually accidentally, as people said things intended to dissuade her.   
  
"What else did the Prince write, Harry? What, that wasn't related to spells? Remember, we said at one point that the textbook was almost like a diary."  
  
"No,  _you_  said that, Hermione," Harry came back obstinately. "You were trying to convince me that it was dangerous, like Riddle's diary. And it was, okay? No need to prove your point over and over again."  
  
"But I'm not trying to prove that, Harry. You were right, not me; it was just a book, and Snape was just a student who had made notes. But what was he interested in, besides Potions? He had hexes written down, ways to hurt people he saw as enemies, but was there anything else that might tell us about the sort of person he was?"  
  
"Hermione, we  _know_  what kind of person he is. He was a greasy, skinny, ugly teenager who grew up to be a murderer."  
  
"Have you been listening to a word I've said, Harry? Or that the others have said? We've analyzed the cave water, Harry, and we know that even if that potion hadn't killed him, the water the Inferi had been kept in surely would have. Dumbledore was dead before he ever left that cave with you."  
  
"Funny how he walked about, then, wasn't it? Flew a broomstick quite well, too… for a dead man, that is." Harry stabbed at his slice of roast, clearly beginning to regret his decision to come down to dinner for a change.   
  
"It was a slow poison, Harry. He explained that himself. And the exchange between him and Snape on the tower, you were there, how could you have missed it? And the way Snape avoided hurting you even when he was so angry, when you called him a coward –"  
  
"Yes, I was there!" Harry threw down his fork and stood, slamming his chair to the wall behind him. "I was there, and you weren't. You may have seen my memory, but you're crazy if you think there was anything like that passing between Dumbledore and Snape. Dumbledore wanted Snape to save him, he still trusted him. He still  _trusted_  him. And Snape  _was_  a coward. Snape – " Unable to finish, Harry stumbled from the room, leaving his four anguished friends alone at the timeworn kitchen table.   


 

* * *

  
  
She had managed to assemble quite a tidy amount of information about Snape, over the few weeks that followed the Unpleasant Incident over Dinner. His best subjects at school (Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, no surprises there). His wand particulars (birch, 14 ½ inches, dragon heartstring core, and a quality Ollivander had noted in his ledger as "not inflexible when new, but potential for later brittleness if not cared for properly"). His history since leaving school, or at least as much of it as was known. That much, she had gleaned from Harry, before he had stopped speaking to her entirely. His appearance and acquaintances while at school, per anecdotes from Remus that seemed oddly normal, oddly like the sort of stories one might hear about any unfortunate public school boy, liked by few, pitied by some, and ridiculed by the popular. His friends, Slytherins all, seemed more for convenience and connection, than for companionship. His enemies were exactly the sort you might expect: the naturally good-looking, the confident, the well-liked among the student body. Despite the exaggerated view of things Harry had received from Snape's memories in the Pensieve, Snape didn't really figure very largely in the lives of the Marauders. He was an object of scorn, no more and no less. Yet clearly, Lupin admitted, the Marauders had figured very largely in Snape's life, and in a horrible way that he, Lupin, had since come to regret immensely.  
  
Of Snape's guilt over the prophecy, and its possible link to the death of the Potters, Hermione knew as little as anyone, and cared still less. To her mind, no matter how stringent a proof of loyalty Dumbledore thought this to have been, Snape could still have been lying. Just as he could now be lying to Voldemort. The latter, of course, was the possibility upon which Hermione had begun to hinge all her hopes. Because, she reasoned, if her supposition about Harry's being the Horcrux were true, then all Dumbledore's plans for Snape would be for naught, and he would be risking his life needlessly to create an opportunity for Harry to destroy the false Horcrux. Or to create some other opportunity, perhaps, one that Hermione couldn't divine. Either way, the Order could better use his help directly, to help them sort out how to deal with Harry the Horcrux, than to lose him for no reason just because Dumbledore had wrongly supposed it necessary.  
  
In a stack to one side of the large study desk, almost buried under a pile of more recent notes, was the thin sheaf of papers and clippings Hermione had first assembled during the previous school term, regarding Eileen Prince. It was to these she had turned that morning in late October, seeking some heretofore-unseen clue, or perhaps just sensing that her mind needed a break from its steady diet of Snape. Sadly, she found no such escape from the steady diet of Ron, who could not resist the temptation to continue needling her from time to time.   
  
"Ginny is in her room again, you know. Crying, because Harry snubbed her last night on the stairs."  
  
"Mm?" Hermione flipped back to the notes she had made from Eileen's yearbook entry.  
  
"On the other hand, Neville is all in a lather now, because he thinks he likes Loony."  
  
"Luna," Hermione corrected automatically. She opened another sugar quill from the stash she kept hidden in the desk drawer; often, she found, she thought better with something to nibble on.  
  
"Then, of course, there's Tonks, who Mum keeps complaining about, being upset all over again because Remus still hasn't proposed. This place is a hotbed of unrequited yearning, I'm telling you, Hermione." Gathering that she was not fully attending to him, Ron spoke a little louder. "As for me, I'm seriously considering launching a full-scale assault on the next eligible woman to walk through that door."  
  
"If, as you say, Ronald, we are already so rich in the lovelorn, wouldn't adding yourself to the list be bringing coals to Newcastle? Surely, better to leave well enough alone?" Unlike Ron, Hermione had little trouble minding a book and a conversation at the same time.  
  
"Coals… to Newcastle? Oh, bringing Gobstones to Sheffield, like."  
  
Ron registered the heavy silence, a moment before he noticed Hermione's intent stare.   
  
"Say that again," she whispered.   
  
"What? Gobstones to Sheffield?"  
  
"What does that mean, Ron?" From her tight tone, Ron could tell she was asking for more than a comparison of the wizarding and Muggle idioms.   
  
"Well… Sheffield's where they make Gobstones, mostly, isn't it… so they already have a lot of Gobstones there. So why would you want to bring  _more_  – "   
  
"It can't be that easy," Hermione was muttering to herself, oblivious to Ron now, as she ran her finger down the page before her. "Ron, I'm going out. I may not be back for a couple of days. You'll cover for me, won't you?" Hermione was already halfway to the study door, shoving books in her rucksack as she went along.   
  
"What the – cover for you? Are you mad? Where are you going? Hermione?"  
  
"I can't tell you until I'm sure. But I know I'm right, Ron, I know it. Trust me!" she called, from halfway down the hall.   
  
By the time Ron reached the door, Hermione had already disappeared, and if she made him any further answer when he called, he couldn't hear her in the muffling stillness of the old house.  


 

* * *

  
  
It had not, as it happened, been quite that easy after all. The hardest bit, Hermione reflected, had been realizing that she had to employ Muggle methods, after all this time spent learning how to navigate in the wizarding world of Floos and Owls.   
  
Well, that, and getting the phone company to let her have a crack at the archives had been a bit tricky, too. But at last, after having spent an uncomfortable night at a suspiciously cheap hotel, and having spent nearly all of the present day of looking through the brittle, dusty pages of telephone books past, Hermione had at last arrived at her destination.   
  
She hoped.   
  
It was not, as she had first supposed, the former house of the late Eileen Snape, onetime captain of the Hogwarts Gobstones club -- although that young lady had indeed gained her skill at that game by playing it nearly every day of her young life here, in this very city, in the grubby wizarding enclave where the game pieces were still made.   
  
Nor was it the home of the late Tobias Snape, steelworker, who had continued to reside in the city of his birth and employment, marriage and divorce, until his death some ten years prior to Hermione's arrival.   
  
Realizing that her best bet was to find a Snape home that had once had, but no longer had, a telephone, Hermione looked next to see which Snapes had had listed numbers, say, fifteen or twenty years ago. And, through her great good fortune, aided by the relative paucity of Snapes in the vicinity, she had found one. Only one. Mr. and Mrs. J. Snape, on Spinner's End.   
  
And if Snape wasn't inside, Hermione speculated, she was in even bigger trouble than she anticipated. Even her fledgling skills were enough to detect, with hardly any work, the presence of powerful warding spells, safeguarding not only the door but the entire house. With more work, she would have detected the delicate warning system, which she had already triggered upon entering the shabby block while carrying a wand. To give her credit, however, Hermione was very tired, and still very young, and was now quite pleased with herself for her success. It was to be a short-lived emotion.   
  
" _Stupefy_."  


 

* * *

  
  
" _Ennervate_ ," the same ice-water voice said, and Hermione found herself bound hand and foot, seated in an armchair, while Snape stood across the room fixing her with his very best Potions-master glare.  
  
"Miss Granger?" he asked, then stopped. Sometimes, he knew, open-ended questions were best. This was as open-ended as they came; but, then, Granger was a talker.  
  
"Professor Snape!" she cried, struggling reflexively against the cords that secured her to the chair. "Thank goodness I've found you. You've got to come back to us, sir. Dumbledore missed something, something tremendous, and there's no point your being here anymore. I know about the deal the two of you made, and your promise to him, and all you'd have to do is send me back with your memory. Nobody really believes me, not really, they don't even know where I am now. But once they all saw the memory, they would all realize, Professor, and you could come back. Whatever you have, whatever he's given you, it isn't the real Horcrux. He thinks it is, but it isn't. So sacrificing yourself to destroy it won't help the Order, it won't fulfill Dumbledore's wishes." Having babbled herself to a halt, Hermione stared at Snape, unable to read his reaction from his blank, black eyes.   
  
Whatever Snape had been expecting, this certainly wasn't it. A Miss Granger prepared to assault him single-handedly, he could have believed. A Miss Granger on a mission to try to convert him back to the side of Light using only logic and Arithmantic principles, such would not have caused him to raise an ebony eyebrow. But this Miss Granger, full of fervor to bring him back because of a promise to Dumbledore, a promise she was sure he had made, a Horcrux that she believed him to have, a Horcrux that she insisted was false…   
  
This Miss Granger required some additional thinking about.   
  
Snape quickly covered for the thinking time as he usually did: with misdirection and sarcasm.   
  
"So, Miss Granger. Once again, hubris proves your downfall. You are here alone, are you not? No Potter and Weasley to help you this time? The Golden Trio showing a little tarnish, after all? But you assumed, yet again, that whatever theory you devised simply must be correct, coming as it did from the mind of the great Miss Granger. And so. Here… you… are."  
  
"Yes, Professor, in your library. So it seems at least one part of my theory proved correct." She was still coasting on her success, and her fear was subsiding a bit now that he seemed disinclined to do her any immediate harm.   
  
"Dumbledore gone not half a year, and you're already fancying yourself as his replacement? Mastermind for the Order of the Phoenix? Or would that make it… let's see… Oh, yes. The Order of the Otter?"  
  
Hermione bristled at this; though it might not be as flashy as some, she was nonetheless quite proud of her otter Patronus. "Still better than the Order of the Stubborn, Surly… Professor," she finished with a lurch of frustration, unable to make herself utter the first several nouns that had leapt to mind.   
  
"Don't call me Professor, anymore, Miss Granger. Unless it has escaped your notice, which I find impossible to imagine, I am no longer employed by Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Nor, I am given to understand, is anyone else."  
  
"You sound a little bitter.  _Mister_  Snape. And here I thought you despised teaching."  
  
"I never despised teaching," he countered smoothly. "Only students. Particularly pushy, know-it-all ones, who can't resist nosing their way into the business of their betters."  
  
"Elders, anyway," Hermione shrugged, feeling somehow less inclined to deference, now that the Professorial robes were officially gone. "So, if I'm wrong, why haven't you delivered me to He Who Must Not Be Named already, then?"  
  
"I haven't finished interrogating you yet," Snape stated matter-of-factly. He was staring coolly at her again, unreadable as ever. For the first time since entering the house, an icy chill of genuine doubt crept its skeletal fingers down Hermione's tender spine, ending in a sick knot somewhere in the region of her stomach. "Tell me about the Horcruxes that the Potter brat has already located. We already know of the Slytherin locket. Have there been others?"   
  
Hermione met his eyes with as much false bravery as she could muster, blocking her mind frantically in case he tried to use Legilimency against her. Hoping against hope, now, that she might still be correct, that he might still be bluffing to try to protect his cover, she decided to tell him everything she knew. He would get it out of her anyway, she reasoned, if he turned out to be whom he pretended to be. And none of it could harm the Order now, after the fact.   
  
"Mundungus Fletcher had Hufflepuff's cup. It had been passed back and forth between a few shady dealers, and he had nicked it from one of them, he said to save against a rainy day. When we asked him about it at first, he clammed up. But everyone knew that was suspicious, so we finally bribed it out of him. Two bottles of firewhisky, and a whole drawerful of the Black family silver that he'd somehow missed the first time. Well, Sirius hadn't wanted it, anyway, and of course Harry had no use for it. Molly Weasley was horrified, but it worked like a charm in the end.   
  
"So Professor Flitwick and Professor Slughorn tested it, to make sure it was the real Horcrux, and then Remus and Mr. Shacklebolt figured out a way to blast it to bits without getting caught the way that…"  
  
"The way Dumbledore did with the ring. You surprise me, Miss Granger. I anticipated having to force this information out of you. Your forthrightness makes me doubt your veracity." He neared her, looming closer as if to make firmer eye contact.  
  
"What would be the point," Hermione rushed on, "of hiding any of this? It's not a secret, anyway, and why wouldn't we want He Who Must Not Be Named to know his safeguards were being destroyed? Why wouldn't we want him to know we were getting the upper hand?"  
  
"I can think of several reasons. If you were getting the upper hand, which you are not. However, as you have evidently come alone, and are known for your foolhardy and impetuous decisions, nearly as well as you are for your ego… I'll grant you this. For now. Continue, girl."  
  
The sun had just been setting as Hermione had arrived on Snape's doorstep, and it had now gone completely; Snape had made no move to supplement the single candle and meager fire that lit the room, but Hermione was sure she couldn't have read his expression any better by the light of the sun at high noon than she could in the gathering dusk. Resolute, committed past hope of withdrawal, she soldiered on.  
  
"The Ravenclaw one turned out to be right under our noses. It was the inkwell, the one Rowena Ravenclaw was said to have used when she drafted the castle's floor plans, and the Ravenclaws kept it in a locked and warded case in their common room. At the end of our – my – third year, it was evidently stolen. But it reappeared the next year, it was there in the case when the students returned from the long holiday. Luna Lovegood told us about it much later, just when we started asking about what sort of artifacts from Ravenclaw's time might be about. We didn't really know Luna at the time it all happened, so we'd never heard about it before, because the Ravenclaws didn't like it bandied about that one of their own had confessed to stealing it for a prank."  
  
"Confessed… to Moody," Snape contributed, nodding sagely.   
  
"Yes. Or rather, to Barty Crouch, Jr. We've pieced together that Peter Pettigrew must have taken it, shortly before he left, and secreted it somewhere to take along to Vold—to You-Know-Who, as an offering of sorts. A token, to win back his place in... his Lord's… good graces. That Ministry worker who went missing, Bertha Jorkins, her death may well have been used to create the Horcrux."   
  
"And then Crouch, Jr. returned it, and secured a plausible confession to cover himself."  
  
"Exactly. Although we still don't know who delivered it to him, or when."   
  
"It doesn't matter," Snape said dismissively. Through the narrow front window, there came a distant flash of orange light, followed a second or so later by a muffled, but house-rattling, boom. "None of it matters. It's beginning." He snatched the heavier curtain shut, but through its threadbare weave, Hermione could still see more flashes, orange and now green, and the thin finger of terror she had felt earlier had suddenly become a giant's fist, crushing her chest.  
  
"What's beginning? What is this?" she cried.  
  
Snape ignored her, reaching for his wand and pointing it at her. Hermione flinched by reflex, expecting the worst and steeling herself for whatever it was. Instead, she felt the serpentine cords around her wrists and ankles loosen and fall away, and Snape was pulling her up roughly from the chair, propelling her towards the door.   
  
"Go now, Miss Granger. You must go, now, and don't stop. Step out that door and get yourself back to wherever it is you and your friends are hiding, and forget you were ever here."  
  
Hermione yanked herself out of his grasp, bracing herself against a bookshelf when he tried to regain his purchase on her. "But why? What's happening? Why would you send me back, if I'm wrong? Why not just kill me? And if something's starting, why aren't you being summoned?"  
  
"I am not a foot-soldier, Miss Granger. What you see now is just the early stages of a wave of destruction and panic that will sweep across the Wizarding and Muggle worlds alike, preparing the way for an even more devastating event. When he has need of me, he will call for me, but not for this." It might have seemed somewhat ludicrous that Snape evinced some pride in this status, were the circumstances other than what they were.  
  
"I know what for. I know what you're protecting for him. Or rather, what you think you're protecting. And I've already told you, it's not the real thing. You're giving yourself up for nothing. Dumbledore wouldn't have wanted that."  
  
"You have no idea what Dumbledore might have demanded of me, Miss Granger," Snape hissed, his twisted countenance made still more grotesque by the muted tracery of green and orange light that flickered over it. "No idea what price he exacted in exchange for absolution."  
  
"But there  _was_  absolution," Hermione stated bluntly, no longer asking. Snape looked at her for a long moment.   
  
"You have to go now," he finally repeated. He wore an expression now, but not one Hermione could read. "It's just after sundown, and at midnight, the true battle will commence. Between now and then, Death Eaters, giants, Dementors, and Inferi will tear into every known wizarding home and establishment, killing any wizard or witch who isn't prepared to take a blood oath of fealty to the Dark Lord. The half-bloods will be given the chance to prove their worth. The Mud – those … like you, will be lucky to spend the rest of their lives in servitude." He continued, ignoring her gasp of horror. "Only those the Dark Lord deems worthy will be allowed to keep their children. The rest of the young will be taken, and those who survive will be sent back to Hogwarts. The school will re-open, but as…" Even Snape lacked the fortitude to pretend indifference to what he was describing. "Not as it was before," he went on.   
  
"Headquarters, is it still safe?"  
  
"Not if it's where it once was. The death of a secret-keeper leaves certain weaknesses, no matter how carefully prepared for."  
  
"Prepared for. You said it, you admitted it. I was right."   
  
"Miss Granger, you are making potentially fatal assumptions about my character. Please go, if not to the Order's hideaway, then to some other place, to await the outcome of this battle. To await your fate, if you prefer to think of it that way."  
  
"Why not just kill me, then? If you're on that side, why am I still standing here? And why would you let me go?" Hermione was advancing as she spoke, and Snape had backed into the library room once more, almost a reversal of their earlier movement.  
  
"Perhaps my Master wishes to hunt you for sport, out in your natural Muggle habitat," Snape suggested. "It matters little. By midnight, if his plan succeeds, you will be dead in any case, as will your friends. By his own hand, not mine, for that is his stated wish."  
  
"So why not deliver me now, isn't that what he would want?"  
  
"Are you so eager to give up your life, that you would squander your last few hours? When you could be using the time to think of a way out of your predicament, which you surely believe yourself capable of doing?" His voice now held a subtle but detectable note of frustration, just the tiniest glimmer, but it was enough; Hermione knew she was right, had been right all along. He wanted her to find some way. But something was holding him back, keeping him from simply leaving with her.  
  
" _Is_  there a way out?" she asked, with no idea what she  _should_  be asking.  
  
"Of course not."  
  
"But why—"  
  
"Think."   
  
And so, with the explosions, and soon the screams, merging into a macabre and urgent tapestry of sound outside, Hermione thought. She thought about Horcruxes, and about Secret-keepers. She thought about Harry. About Snape, Dumbledore, and the once-human monster that now threatened them all. When her brain arrived at Vows (and Oaths: Blood; lightly made, lightly broken; Simple; Unbreakable), it stopped and mulled awhile.   
  
Eventually, some of the mulling worked its way to the surface, and Hermione began to mutter aloud, pacing the small room, while Snape watched and waited. "Not a secret-keeper, because you couldn't have got even this far with a hint. And it would actually totally preclude the possibility of your telling, he might not like that. It would reduce the risk to you, so reduce his leverage. So an oath… a vow… probably something nasty, with blood." She fell silent again, pacing, then turned to face Snape, a look of oddly incongruous eagerness on her young face.   
  
"Is there anything on your person right now that doesn't belong to you?" Her face fell as Snape sighed, looked disappointed, and rolled up the left sleeve of his white, lawn shirt to reveal the Dark Mark. Their eyes met, and then Hermione turned away, smacking herself lightly on the forehead with the heel of one hand. "Should I bother asking if there's anything else…" As he made no answer, merely snorted, she did not bother.  
  
She resumed her pacing, but almost immediately turned again, her eagerness tempered with caution, this time. Slowly, carefully, she made her request.  
  
"Will you empty your trouser pockets onto this table?" Snape stared back at her for a moment, then almost leapt to comply, pulling one pocket inside out in his haste to deposit its contents of a key ring, a few coins, and a neatly folded pocket handkerchief. The other pocket evidently contained only one item, a small drawstring pouch made of dark red velvet, that seemed to contain a round item, roughly the size of a walnut. Both of them contemplated the bag for several moments, unsure how to proceed.  
  
"Can you tell me anything at all about the contents of that bag?" She finally asked. To her surprise, Snape answered promptly.   
  
"It's a Snitch," he said. At her baffled look, he added, "A Golden Snitch. For Quidditch, you know."  
  
"Yes, I  _know_  what a Snitch is, thank you. But… why? Why a Snitch?"  
  
"Ah." He took a moment, seeming to feel his way around whether or not he could say what he intended, then gave a slight shrug. "Bowman Wright, inventor of the Golden Snitch, was from Godric's Hollow. Tom Riddle once remarked that he thought Quidditch epitomized the difference between the wizarding and Muggle worlds. Riddle, himself, never flew for his house team." These seemingly disjointed bits of trivia gave Hermione all the information she needed. Briefly, she acknowledged that she should probably have given Luna Lovegood more of her attention during the search for this final Horcrux.  
  
"Is it enabled? Will it fly at me?"  
  
"Not if you leave it in the bag. But—"  
  
Hermione was reaching hesitantly towards the bag, and Snape grabbed her hand at the wrist to stop her. She looked up at him, startled.   
  
"How confident are you that your theory is correct, Miss Granger?" he asked, warning her away.   
  
"I didn't leave when you told me to," she pointed out. "Any of the times you told me to," she added, reaching for the bag only to be stopped again.   
  
"An object doesn't have to be a Horcrux to have lethal wards and protection spells placed upon it. Proceed… cautiously."   
  
"You had it in your trouser pocket. How lethal can it be?"  
  
"Lethal is lethal. Spells can be adapted to respond differently to different people. Caution, Miss Granger. Do not underestimate the Dark Lord; he does know how to protect what is his."  
  
"What do you suggest, then?" At his silence, she rolled her eyes. "Thank you,  _Mister_  Snape. Stand back, please.  _Can_  you stand any further back?"   
  
"No, in fact, I can't."  
  
"I see. Wait… have you tried?"   
  
"I beg your pardon?"  
  
"Have you tried? I mean, it's possible that… well, it could be an easier way to test this." Snape was still scowling, which Hermione took as an indication that he had failed to grasp her meaning. "If you swore an oath that had to do with the Horcrux – not on this specific object, but on 'the Horcrux,' then perhaps you could put this down and just walk away from it. If you could, it wouldn't be the Horcrux, would it, and… what?"  
  
Snape was shaking his head, standing just where he had been. "I can't stand back, Miss Granger."  
  
"Well, how do you know—"   
  
"I just tried, while you were blathering on. This is as far away as I can go."  
  
"Oh. I see. Well, then. That seems like a stupid way to do an oath, though."  
  
"Time is fleeting, Miss Granger, while you waste it in idle chatter."  
  
"Oh, very well," Hermione snapped at him, increasingly annoyed at his sarcastic remarks, certain that  _they_  weren't required by the oath, however poorly made. "It does stand to reason, I suppose. If you were bound to the Horcrux as a concept, rather than to this Snitch in particular, you'd be stuck within hand's reach of Harry all the time, wouldn't you, and I think we both know how that would work out."  
  
Snape's jaw dropped, and his brow shot towards the ceiling. "I would… what?  _I would WHAT?_ "  
  
"You'd be more or less attached to Harry, if my theory is correct. I thought I had already explained this…" his expression made it quite clear that she had not. "This Snitch isn't the Horcrux, because when He Who Must Not Be Named tried to kill Harry, to endow this thing with a part of his soul, he couldn't do it. Couldn't kill Harry, I mean. Instead, Harry's mother died, and Harry lived. Not what your Master had intended, so his Horcrux wasn't created as intended. But he had already set the creation of a Horcrux in train, so that loose bit of soul had to go somewhere. And who experiences all your Lord's strongest emotions? Whose dreams can Vold—He who Must Not be Named, sorry – seem to control at will? On whom was all Lily's attention, all her hope for the future, focused, in that moment?"  
  
"Potter," spat Snape, staring down at the bag containing the Snitch. "Potter. Again. Of course.  _Of course!_ " And he brought his hand down, hard, on the rickety table, unwittingly snapping the top from its spindly legs. With a crack, the whole thing flew to pieces, the items on top flung wildly across the floor.   
  
Hermione saw the velvet bag skitter across the wooden floor and disappear under the chair behind her, at the same moment she heard Snape's anguished cry. He fell to the floor, clutching fruitlessly after the Snitch in its bag, just out of range. Without thinking she bent down, snatched it from its resting place, and pushed the whole works into his outstretched hand.  
  
He heaved a sob of relief, and another, and Hermione was about to ask after his state of well being, when she realized that he wasn't sobbing anymore. He was laughing. And a creaky, long-forgotten sound it was, wheezing up from Snape's unaccustomed lungs, ending in a smile that, in truth, looked something like a rictus. The whole activity seemed more to pain him than to bring him pleasure, calling on muscles that had so long ago given up any hope of such exercise.   
  
Hermione stared down at the cackling, grinning form at her feet in growing disbelief. "Professor…" This only sent him into another convulsive round of laughter, which finally ended after some minutes in a series of hitching, coughing, chuckles and snorts. When he had gone quite silent, Hermione finally pinned him with a glare. "I suppose you're quite finished, now?"   
  
Snape looked up at her with an expression she had never thought to see on his face, one of simple, unguarded, amusement. After the barest moment, however, he slipped back into one of his more comfortable masks, letting a wry twist misshape his thin lips. "So," he said at last, sitting up and dangling the bag by its silken strings. " _Not_  lethal, then."   
  
"I told you so," Hermione retorted, finding no difficulty in keeping her own laughter in check, as she registered a particularly piercing scream and a series of crashing sounds from the street outside. "It sounds like it's getting closer," she whispered, then felt foolish for doing so.   
  
"What time is it?" Snape asked, rising to his feet and making something of a show of brushing himself off.   
  
"Just past six. That one was definitely closer…" For the last explosion, indeed, had sounded and felt as though it must be only a few houses away, and the windowpanes rattled until the sound died out.  
  
"This house might as well be invisible to them, Miss Granger. The Dark Lord has made it so, for this night. Among the Death Eaters, only a handful of the inner circle know where to find me anyway. Pettigrew, the Lestranges, the Malfoys… one of them would have to be taken, and broken, by the Order, to give me away here. All of that would take time. Lucius Malfoy has already withstood months of interrogation in Azkaban without giving my location away, so I assume even Pettigrew could last a few hours. And until midnight, anyway, all of them are as hidden as we are now." He looked at her thoughtfully. "I assume you spoke truthfully when you said you had come here without the Order's knowledge?" She nodded, still staring in shock at the window. "You do know that was extremely foolish of you, don't you?" There was no menace in his voice, and she took his admonishment in the honest spirit with which it was given.  
  
"I do, yes. But even once I'd advanced my theory, and convinced most of them… not the Order, really, but Ron, Ginny, Neville, and Luna… I still couldn't get anyone interested in finding you to let you know. To bring you back."  
  
"No, of course you couldn't. They wouldn't want me back. I couldn't go back. I murdered Albus Dumbledore, Miss Granger. Murdered him before witnesses, including the Boy Who Whinged, and in doing so I secured a place at the right hand of the Dark Lord. A place that would never be in doubt, a place from which I might do anything.  _Anything_."   
  
She could hear the intensity in his voice as he spoke of such power, and was struck, not for the first time in the course of the evening, by how very ambiguous he remained. Intent seemed to slide away, his words could be taken to mean so many different things. Twenty years and more, Hermione supposed, had ingrained him in the habit of saying only those things he would always be able to mean. She had never actually heard him lie, she realized, and she doubted she ever would; he didn't need to, it seemed, to maintain whichever position he was in fact maintaining. She had to wonder if he, himself, knew anymore, or if his very thoughts now skirted all issues of loyalty equally.  
  
"The Muggles," she said suddenly, gesturing towards the window and the street beyond, "Doesn't he care? He can't possibly hide all this. There would be no way to explain it all away, not if the Ministry set every employee to—"  
  
"He doesn't care," Snape said curtly. "Once he has brought the wizarding world to its knees, he plans to begin a systematic eradication of the Muggles. Some will be kept as servants. As slaves, really. He's quite keen on the idea of slaves," Snape drawled, throwing a sardonic look her way; it was, perhaps, the closest he had ever come to making a derogatory remark about Lord Voldemort. "Miss Granger… your contingent of misfit juvenile heroes were clearly possessed of greater common sense than you displayed. You should never have come here alone."  
  
"But what's happening to them, right now? If Headquarters has been breached?"  
  
He ignored her question, and chose instead to distract her with the possibility of a plan. "We have just under six hours," he pointed out. "We have one false Horcrux, which the Dark Lord still believes to be genuine. We know where, or in whom, the real Horcrux may well be located. The Dark Lord does not. Given the timing of your disappearance, your friends have probably already written you off as dead, or captured at the very least—" Hermione's gasp made him pause only briefly—"which may ultimately be to our advantage. That remains to be seen."   
  
"I didn't even stop to consider how they might…"  
  
"Nor should you now. Now is not the time, as you can do nothing about it until after the battle. If you survive. If any of them survive. For now, all we can do is formulate a plan, based on the assets and information we have. And then we can wait."  
  
Hermione was staring at him, a bruised look around her eyes giving her tension away. "How do I know whether I was right to come here or not? We could spend this time planning, and then you might still deliver me to You-Know-Who, and laugh as he kills me."  
  
Snape returned her look with one that hinted, just a little, of his earlier amusement. "Don't forget the bit where I dance on your grave, Miss Granger. Yes, this might just be my idea of a grand entertainment, spending these last few hours of your life lulling you into a false sense of security, before delivering you up to the Dark Lord on a silver platter, a little suckling pig with its mouth stuffed full of righteous indignation. Fit meat for a king to feed upon, don't you think?"  
  
Her eyes had narrowed, her fear forgotten again as she stared him down. "That isn't funny," she growled, automatically reaching for her back pocket where her wand was usually kept. It was empty, of course; Snape had taken the wand when he bound her, and never returned it. She realized, glancing down, that he was holding it out to her now.   
  
"It was funny to me," Snape said, letting her take the wand. "It also made me more than a bit peckish. Do you fancy something to eat, before we begin?"


	2. Chapter 2

Like Alice down a rather dodgy rabbit hole, Hermione had now eaten and drunk of everything she found before her. Seated at the table in the drab little kitchen, she and Snape could still see the firestorm through the area window, if they looked. A few carefully placed spells had shielded out most of the sound and flying debris, however, and Hermione was beginning to relax now that she could no longer hear the carnage in progress.   
  
Snape had eaten sparingly, despite his being the one to initiate the meal, and he now sat bent over a book, scribbling occasional notes on a loose sheet of parchment. His hooked nose dropped closer and closer to the page as Hermione watched, as he grew increasingly engrossed with his subject. He had scraped his lank hair back to tie it out of the way with a narrow ribbon, but most of the thin, oily stuff had already slipped forward again, brushing the page lightly with his every movement. From time to time he would impatiently brush the longer strands out of the way, only to find them encroaching again.   
  
Finally, growing impatient to know just what he was plotting there, Hermione decided to get his attention. Tempted though she was to shout his name and watch him jump, she opted for a kinder way, and cleared her throat gently. Snape looked up, his intense expression of concentration settling on her for a moment as he shifted his focus from the page to the woman before him.   
  
"I am endeavoring to work out any possible scenario in which we might all survive this night's activities. Mister Potter included," he hastened to add, anticipating the unspoken question. "He is, of course, the problem. If he does contain a Horcrux, his death may simply be an unfortunate but necessary cost." With that, Snape bent to the page again, despite Hermione's sound of protest.   
  
"Absolutely not!" She stood and began to clear the dishes, stopped for a moment as if realizing there were little point, then cleared them anyway to give her hands something to do. "Harry already seems to assume that everyone in the Order wants him to sacrifice himself to save us all."  
  
"Perhaps he's simply taking a realistic view of his situation. The prophecy, after all—"  
  
"The prophecy is a load of tripe, as you well know. Except inasmuch as your Master believes in it, and about all that's worth anymore is what we all already know: he's going to try kill Harry."  
  
"'Neither can live, while the other—'"  
  
"Yes, yes, I've heard the damned thing, and I stand by what I said." Hermione slammed the plates a bit too loudly into the sink, and snapped her wand at them, with a few crisply delivered charms that set the dishcloths to aggressive scrubbing. "I say we isolate Harry, take care of You-Know-Who, then figure out how to remove the Horcrux, transfer it into something we can safely destroy. Perhaps a Potion would help, as that's a strength of yours. A sort of… Horcrux emetic."  
  
She turned from the sink to see Snape watching her closely, amused again.   
  
"Horcrux emetic?" he repeated delicately, enunciating each syllable.   
  
"Well, what do you have, that's better, then?" she demanded, flinging down the gauntlet; the gauntlet was, in this case, actually a tea towel, with which she proceeded to wipe down the table. Snape took up the challenge, regardless.  
  
"We arrive when the Dark Lord summons me, and pretend you are my captive. I use you as a human shield so that Potter doesn't kill me the moment he gets the chance. We wait to see if Potter or anyone else in the Order is actually successful. If so, we produce the false Horcrux, explain your theory, show them my memory, and proceed according to your plan. If not, we help the Dark Lord to celebrate his glorious victory, and I ask to keep you for myself, as a special favor. You should have no trouble producing the necessary show of outrage at this, all of which he will enjoy greatly. Then, we wait and see what opportunities present themselves."  
  
"Wait and see what – please tell me you're not serious?  _That_  is your plan?"  
  
"I feel my plan is much more realistic. Except the bit about him letting you live. He seems most eager to see you and young Ronald Weasley perish along with Potter. He did state, at one point last year, that he might let you and Miss Weasley live long enough to collect your virgin's blood for some gruesome ceremony he had in mind. However, Malfoy and I were both quick to disabuse him of the notion that such a possibility existed in a Hogwarts girl your age, in this day and time. Malfoy in particular shared a lurid tale, passed along from… Miss Granger, are you ill?"   
  
For Hermione held a shaky hand to her mouth, and a deep flush was spreading across her formerly rather wan cheeks.   
  
"Miss Granger, we haven't much time. If you need some sort of assistance, you will have to –"  
  
"I should have said yes. It could've been Ron. It wouldn't have been so bad. He would have been hurt about it afterward, but…" She was half-whispering to herself, now, seemingly oblivious to Snape's concern. "Not as badly as this, he wouldn't. He would've understood, in time. I was curious, he was curious, these things happen."   
  
"Miss Granger, the time. If we don’t develop our plan soon, we –"  
  
"The time?" she asked shrilly, looking at the clock on the wall. "It appears to be just a few minutes before seven-thirty. Which means we have approximately four and a half hours left. You have four and a half hours in which to wait and see, followed by an indefinite period of further waiting and seeing. While I," Hermione wailed, " _I_  evidently have four and a half hours left before I become a megalomaniac's virgin sacrifice!"   
  
"Control yourself, Miss Granger! Have you gone quite mad? In order to be a virgin sacrifice, one must first be –"  
  
"Don't you think I know that?" shrieked Hermione, abandoning her last vestige of calm. "Haven't you been  _listening_? I told him no, I told him no, because I didn't want to hurt his feelings by just using him for sex! I listened to my mother, and this is where it's gotten me?  _This_?" And with that, Hermione lurched from the room, blind with tears, and evidently made her wretched way up the stairs.   
  
Snape could hear her sobs easily through the thin walls, and followed her trail of tears slowly, resignedly, back up to the library, where she sat weeping on the tattered sofa. Quietly, he repaired the little table, and procured a cup of tea to place upon it. Without a word, he sat on the chair opposite her, and waited out the storm of tears, as he had waited out many a weeping Slytherin girl during his tenure as head of that house. They were more or less alike in this mode, he reasoned. Girl or woman, Slytherin or Gryffindor. Waiting to console, or waiting to renew an attack. It was always the same. The cup of tea, the silence, the handkerchief offered when the weeping reached that certain point. As if on cue, Hermione looked up and sniffled loudly, then thanked him as he held the handkerchief out for her to take.   
  
"Think nothing of it."  
  
More weeping and sniffling, coming to a close soon, unless he missed his guess. And next would come, of course, the apology.   
  
"I'm sorry," Hermione said, holding the soggy handkerchief awkwardly. She was never sure whether to offer such a thing back, or simply to keep it. "I suppose the situation got the best of me. It's all been something of a strain, these past months, and…"  
  
"Miss Granger, while your outburst was perhaps inevitable, even understandable given the circumstances, you should recognize that your… personal matter… can have no bearing on whatever course of action we decide upon for the battle." Snape spoke coldly, distantly, as if the very thought of the matter in question was oppressively repugnant to him. "To put it more bluntly, it will have no bearing on  _my_  course of action in the battle. The fate of one participant, however unpleasant that fate, cannot come before the fate of the entire wizarding world."  
  
"Unpleasant," Hermione echoed dully. "Unpleasant. I see."  
  
"You do not seem to see," Snape countered, "as you are still clearly only concerned with your own dilemma. What of Potter now, Miss Granger? What of the Horcrux? Have you forgotten that there are momentous –"  
  
"Oh, give it a rest, Snape," Hermione said, bitterly. "You want a plan? Fine. Let's avoid playing around and simply split the difference between our two plans. When you're summoned, I go with you, but only to mark the location. Then I get to "escape," Apparate away, and alert the Order, if they're not already there. No human shield, no slave girl. I get to fight with my friends, and if we win, and I live, I'll vindicate your name. Your survival will be entirely up to you. Just let him think the Snitch is safe, and in your care, which will be the truth. If Harry survives… we'll think about what to do then. Bind him as many ways as possible, I suppose, and hope it holds. Then get him someplace safe, where we can all work together on sorting out the last Horcrux."  
  
Snape gave it due consideration, before answering. "That sounds satisfactory, on the face of it. But if the Order does not win?"  
  
"It won't matter. Perhaps it will, to you. You'll be the only one who knows that there aren't really any more Horcruxes left, once Harry's dead. But what you do with that knowledge, I doubt I'll be around to witness."  
  
"You could be, if –"  
  
"No. Him killing me immediately, that's my only chance to avoid… that other thing."  
  
Snape saw that she was crying again, this time with no sobs. Only the tears that ran down her face marked her distress. He hated it when they cried a second time in one sitting; the variables were simply too many to account for, if they started up again, and there were limits to his patience, as well as to the number of cups of tea and handkerchiefs he was willing to produce.   
  
"Crying is hardly useful at this time, Miss Granger. Your energy would be far better spent—"  
  
"Shut  _up_ , will you? I've made my decisions, my way of dealing with them is every bit as valid as yours, so just… shut up. You have no room to complain, as I see it. At least you're not about to go to your untimely death without ever having experienced…"   
  
The pause that followed would surely have surpassed any world records for awkwardness, if records were kept of such things.   
  
Snape finally felt it was incumbent on him to break the silence. "That's true, at least not that."   
  
Another pause followed, during which Snape was acutely aware of the sound of the mantel clock's ticking.   
  
"Help me."   
  
Her voice was so soft, so miserable, he felt sure he must have misunderstood her.  
  
"I  _beg_  your pardon?"  
  
"Help me," she repeated, only a little louder. "You're the only one here, and we only have this little bit of time left. Please. You can tell… your master… whatever you like, tell him you forced me. He'd like that, wouldn't he?"  
  
" _Miss Granger!_ " Snape bolted from his chair, and put as much distance between the two of them as the tiny room would allow, before turning to face her once more.  
  
"It seems like his type of thing," she said, somewhat apologetically.  
  
"You might stop to consider that it is not  _my_  type of thing.  _At all_."  
  
"Oh, no. You're… you're not gay, are you?"  
  
"Miss  _Granger_!" He paused, then stated, in the firmest voice imaginable, "No, I am most certainly  _not_  a homosexual."  
  
"Well, then –"   
  
"I am your  _teacher_. You are my  _student_. This is entirely inappropriate. You will cease this insane propositioning, before I – you'll stop it, that's all."  
  
"We're nothing of the sort. You already made me stop calling you Professor. We're both over the age of consent. Hogwarts is probably a heap of smoldering rubble by now, the way things sound out there. And even if it were still in operation, you certainly wouldn't be working there."  
  
"However the case may be, Miss Granger, the fact remains – by all things holy, put that back on!"  
  
Hermione had stood, as well, and removed her pullover in a single fluid motion, revealing a lace-edged white cotton bra.   
  
"We don't have time to argue about this, by things holy or otherwise."   
  
She grabbed his hands – he was literally backed into a corner at this point – and placed them on her breasts, where his eyes were already riveted (she knew they were nice, Ron had told her so enough times, and some detached part of her was pleased to feel that Snape's reaction more or less confirmed this). "I might not be your first choice at the moment either," Hermione admitted, "but try to see things in a different way. You're not a teacher anymore, you have no special duty to the students of Hogwarts in that regard, and Hogwarts is most likely gone, anyway. You have an eighteen-year-old virgin begging you to let her know a man once before she dies. Nobody will know, you've said yourself your house won't be touched, and you won't be summoned until midnight. Everyone else already assumes the worst of you – " (this may have been pushing too far, but she was desperate) " – but I thought well enough of you to come here and try to find out the truth. Even if you're really one of  _them_ , even if you've just been playing me for a fool for reasons of your own, some part of you must appreciate that."  
  
"If you're right, I'm a man of principle. A man of principle wouldn't take such an offer."   
  
"If I'm right, you're Dumbledore's man. His own brother does it with a goat. You think he would have objected to something this utterly commonplace?"  
  
"There is  _nothing_  commonplace about this situation."   
  
"I notice you still haven't taken your hands away."  
  
Snape looked deeply unhappy. Then he seemed to steel himself for action and, without warning, lunged for Hermione, yanking her close to him, grappling at her breast, while his mouth found hers in a punishing kiss.   
  
"Is this the sort of thing you wanted?" He hissed, pulling back just enough to free their lips. He shoved his hand unceremoniously down her bra, worming his hand around to tweak her nipple painfully. With his other hand, he groped her arse, pulling her tight against his hips and thrusting blatantly. "If you're wrong, If I'm a Death Eater, what then, Miss Granger? You might get more than what you bargained for." He took her lower lip between his teeth, nearly drawing blood from the tender flesh.   
  
To his shock, he felt her tongue flick out to taste him, her hips thrust into his, his every move matched by her as if it had been no more than she expected. Shaky, disgusted with himself and with the enormous erection he suddenly perceived he had, Snape pushed her away and backed off. She stared at him, eyes like saucers, pupils dilated from dim light and passion, her breath coming in short, hitching gasps that he knew echoed his own.   
  
"I've already made my choice, Snape. If that's the way it is, fine. I'm a virgin, not a complete innocent; I have had boyfriends, you know." She approached him, reaching behind her to unsnap her bra as she took the few steps to close the gap between them. "It's nearly eight o'clock, we're running out of time," she said desperately, reaching roughly for him, trying to give him back what he had given.   
  
He stopped her hands with his, holding her back and studying her face for a moment, trying to think of what he might say, what he might ask. Finally, unpredictably, words failed him.  
  
"We're running out of time," she repeated, but kept still, watching him miserably.  
  
"We have time enough for this," he said at last, and folded her into his arms.   
  
At times, even a deeply held commonality between two people can manifest itself in very different ways. Such was the case with Snape and Hermione in the hours that followed.  
  
Snape, though not tremendously experienced by most measures, had read broadly on the subject, during the many long, late, cold nights his dungeon home at Hogwarts had afforded him. A fellow has needs, he reasoned, and given his circumstances, he knew that Dumbledore would turn a blind eye to a discreetly kept stash of select literature meant to help a fellow satisfy those needs. And Snape's voracious appetite for text had led him to supplement his rather meager practical knowledge with a vast theoretical database of things he might do if he ever again got the chance. This was to be Hermione's good fortune.   
  
Hermione, despite her bravado, was in fact woefully inexperienced, having put up with very little from Ron Weasley before becoming annoyed at his fumbling. And despite what many thought, Viktor Krum, old-world gentleman in training, had never tempted her with word too large. She, too, had read broadly on the subject of love, as is often the habit of young women in boarding schools. Her reading had alternately puzzled her, and fired her imagination into uncharacteristic romantic fancies to which she occasionally pursued her oddly insufficient self-gratification. In short, Hermione was a girl waiting for a romance novel to come alive and engulf her, but she was a girl who had almost no basis for comparison, and this was to be Snape's good fortune.   
  
At what point Snape had transfigured the sofa into a low, wide, chaise, Hermione did not know. But as he led her to it, she was suddenly stricken with self-consciousness at the fact that she was standing in her erstwhile Professor's sitting room, topless. The feeling was almost immediately wiped away by the more pertinent matter of his mouth on her nipple, pulling softly, pulling a weak cry out of her. The sensation of his tongue, licking an area never previously licked, almost made Hermione's knees buckle. Snape was sitting on the edge of the chaise, now, his arms encircling her waist, his head bent to her breast, and Hermione leaned into his embrace, plucking ineffectually at his sleeves.   
  
The next pass of his tongue brought a rush of unfamiliar, warm, wetness to Hermione's knickers.  _That's all right… I've read about that,_  she thought in passing. Then he sucked, harder, rhythmically, lowering his hands and stroking her arse through the taut denim of her jeans, and she thought that perhaps she had not read extensively enough. The sensations his mouth and hands stirred seemed to travel straight through to the source of that wetness, and she moaned softly as the throbbing feeling intensified. She had been prepared for haste, and regret. She had neglected to prepare for hormones, however, and for long-dormant needs to bubble up, demanding attention.   
  
Twining her fingers through Snape's hair, surprised at how little she was bothered by its texture, Hermione raised his face again, and bent to kiss him. She let him pull her over slowly, toppling and rolling on the upholstered surface until they wound up supine, with Snape on top, gently pressing a knee between her legs, even as his lips gently pressed hers. When his fingers tugged, a little awkwardly, at the snap on her jeans, Hermione reached to unfasten them, and raised her hips to let him pull them down.   
  
 _No time, no time,_  beat in her head relentlessly; her fingers shook as she unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it off his narrow shoulders. Her blood pounded in every vein; she could feel it in her ears, her fingertips, her stomach, between her legs. Now he had removed her knickers, and she was trying to take off his trousers, and when they got in one another's way they both laughed nervously, then apologized, then kissed again, and again.   
  
His fingers stroked, and prodded, and finally nestled in the warmth at her crux, sliding in and out of her cunt with more enthusiasm than skill. Enthusiasm was enough for Hermione, who felt herself clutch around his hand, trembling and whimpering, gasping for more even as she came. This much, she could have done herself, she reasoned, although reason could not explain the rush of blood to her cheeks and breasts, the way her hands seem to pull him closer all of their own accord. She felt as though she had been blind, and could now see, and that his skin on hers was the light, and all the colors of the rainbow, plus her favorite flavor of cookie, all rolled into one. She could never, possibly, get enough, not in a million years… and they didn't have anything like a million years.   
  
The first feel of his prick in her hand was surprising, although she had known where he was guiding her. Like the first time one touches a snake, she thought, and instead of feeling something scaly and slimy, one feels a cool, smooth, muscle, encased in skin that is only rough if rubbed the wrong way. This one could be rubbed either way, of course, and Snape led her to do that awhile, until he could bear it no longer, and rolled her beneath him again. Slid his knee between her parted thighs, again. Kissed her, again. And then raised himself on his arms, and entered her, carefully, slowly, with only a single harsher thrust to mark her passage from one category to the other.   
  
It hurt, but not as much as she had feared. And now, unsure what the situation demanded of her, she opened her eyes and watched him, trying as always to learn something new. His eyes were closed, his bottom lip clenched between his teeth, his face transfigured with suppressed passion and the effort to keep his climax at bay. The gentle movements of his hips caused the muscles over his abdomen and rib cage to flex as he thrust forward, and relax as he withdrew.   
  
 _Rectus abdominus,_  she thought, her fingers skimming lightly between them.  _External and internal oblique, serratus anterior,_  and then, because he was so thin she almost imagined she could see his bones, his ligaments, beneath his mushroom-pale skin,  _linea alba…_  
  
"I can't hold back any longer…" his voice startled her from her reverie. He seemed to require a response from her.   
  
"All- all right," she offered, and he groaned in relief, and pushed himself forward again and again, until he came with a hoarse, inarticulate cry.  
  
In the end, having made her choice, she felt she became both less, and more, than she had been. As if from outside herself, Hermione saw the hand of Snape, as if it were the hand of any man, braced outside her leg, as if it were the leg of any woman, and although she felt wholly unlike herself in that moment, she also recognized the worth of the act that brought her into line with the rest of the adult human race. This simple thing, that a man and a woman (or some other combination) do, for all its variations, was always at its heart the same thing. No matter who, no matter what or where, always quintessentially the same. And so she was now both less and more than she had been: she was now, in this one regard, just like everybody else.   
  
Afterward, he lay on the lounge, looking a little dazed, perhaps half-asleep. Hermione rose and dressed silently, surprised to see that so much time had elapsed. Around the edge of the window, an eerie green glow had begun to creep into the room; pulling the heavier fabric aside a little, Hermione could see that the red and orange firelight of the earlier explosions had been replaced by a single source; a huge Dark Mark hovered in the air over the devastated city, heralding the start of the real battle to which this mayhem had been only a prelude.  
  
The silence was overwhelming. At first, Hermione thought that Snape's muffling spells were still in effect; when she heard him cancel them, and the silence remained, the icy-cold fingers of dread resumed their earlier grip as if never interrupted. She could hear each distinct tick of the clock on the mantelpiece. She could hear herself breathing. She closed her eyes, and began to speak, so softly that he might not notice in spite of the unearthly hush.  
  
He noticed. "Is that an incantation?"   
  
"No… I'm praying. It can't hurt," she said, shrugging with a philosophical insouciance she did not feel.   
  
"You're very practical." He was sitting up, now, and struggling to don his trousers without standing.  
  
"Yes, I am. It's time, isn't it?"  
  
"Yes." Snape stood and moved to join her at the window, flicking the curtain a little wider with one ectomorphic hand and gazing at the Mark, then letting the fabric fall back into place. "You were never here, you understand that?"  
  
"Live through this." Suddenly, this seemed paramount to Hermione. She didn't know why. She hated the idea that it was only about emotions, about hormones, about these things that were still clearly beyond her ken, regardless of what had just passed between the two of them. But she didn't care. She flung her arms around his waist and clung there, stubbornly, until he returned the embrace.  
  
"I doubt any of us will live through this." 


End file.
